Presently, a variety of businesses and industries require document management processes in which numerous documents are acquired and compiled. In order to obtain the correct documentation in accordance with a particular document management process, administrators need to be able to prepare and modify document management processes suited for their specific business or industry which are able to be presented to operators facilitating the document acquisition from customers in order to guide the operators in the document acquisition process. However, electronic document acquisition may require accessing numerous platforms and systems in order to obtain and store the documents.
Some transactions, such as mortgage applications, etc. require physical documentation in order to provide proof that the document at issue, such as a signed contract, is the original document. However, a problem exists in that paper files cannot be easily stored. Even if the paper files are electronically stored, it is difficult to ascertain which of the electronic documents is an original document.
Further, some electronic document management acquisition systems obtain all of the documentation at a network node instead of at a host computer in communication with the network node, thereby requiring a large amount of storage capacity at the network node.
In addition, electronic document acquisition processes typically link acquired documents only to customer data and not to the single transaction as, for example, a transaction file. Therefore, users are not able to directly retrieve only the documents that relate to the single transaction.
Therefore, a need exists for a document management tool that can integrate with numerous platforms and systems, which is easy to use and designed for the flexible creation of document management processes that allow administrators to create document management processes for their particular industry or business. A need also exists for a document management tool that avoids the problem of having to store original documents, such as original signed documents. A need further exists for a document management tool in which a document acquisition process may occur either primarily at individual host computers or at the network node in communication with the host computers. A need additionally exists for a document management tool that links acquired documents to customer data for a particular transaction. The above-described needs and others not explicitly stated are attempted to be addressed by the present disclosure.